Cardinals Notes: Taveras, Pujols, Aldrete, Trades

The Cardinals’ thrilling 5-4 win over the Giants last night tied the NLCS at a game apiece and also made some postseason history. As ESPN’s Jayson Stark notes, the Cards became the first team to ever hit home runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings of a playoff game. That final homer, of course, was Kolten Wong’s walkoff solo shot. Here’s some more from St. Louis…

Oscar Taveras delivered that seventh-inning homer for the Cards last night, though a few issues have made the top prospect no longer “untouchable” in the organization’s eyes, Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. Taveras hit .239/.278/.312 over 248 PA in this rookie season and didn’t see much action down the stretch in September or in the playoffs thus far — he has only five PH at-bats during the postseason. Perhaps of greater concern, Taveras put on 20 pounds last offseason and “his work habits have drawn attention from some veterans,” though Strauss notes that the 22-year-old “is not considered a toxic clubhouse presence.” In my opinion, even if he’s not totally “untouchable,” St. Louis would undoubtedly want a massive return if they considered dealing Taveras and it’s a very long shot that the team would so quickly give up on such an elite prospect.

The Cardinals’ decision to let Albert Pujols leave as a free agent “could go down as one of the wisest in baseball history,” Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times writes. Rather than spend $250MM on Pujols as the Angels did, the Cards instead spread that money around and have reached the NLCS in all three seasons since Pujols’ departure. “When we knew we had to look at the next chapter of this organization, it was really about understanding how we could redeploy those resources,” GM John Mozeliak said. “You never know if you’re going to be able to sustain that high a level, but certainly to get close to that level, or back to it, was something we were able to achieve, first with the signing of Carlos Beltran and then [Jhonny] Peralta.”

Cardinals bench coach Mike Aldrete is “a very likely possibility” to become the Athletics’ new bench coach, according to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitterlinks). Aldrete has a very good relationship with A’s manager Bob Melvin and a move to Oakland would allow Aldrete to live closer to his home in Monterey. The A’s have a vacancy at bench coach since Chip Hale has been hired as the Diamondbacks’ new manager.

It is generally considered a mistake to fix a roster problem by trading from the Major League roster, yet the Cardinals’ young depth has allowed them to twice make such moves, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes. The Cards dealt Colby Rasmus for bullpen help in 2011 and ended up winning the World Series, while this past July saw Allen Craig and Joe Kelly traded to the Red Sox for John Lackey. “I understand the risk profile in doing what we did,” Mozeliak said. “But in both situations….I felt we had to do something different — I felt we had to pull from the club to improve.”

Comments

It doesn’t hurt that Baseball hands out draft picks to them as if they are a small market. I give their scouting department A+++ for picking the right guys early and late. They only spend on FA to supplement what they are missing.

Technically they are small market. They shouldn’t be penalized because they draft well and their fans actually come to games, unlike some other small markets. St. Louis has the 3rd lowest population of any MLB city, only 13,000 ahead of Pittsburgh at #2, and 21,000 ahead of Cincy at #1.

I only did city limits. Milwaukee is actually about twice the size of STL. You can argue that the Cardinals “market” spreads far beyond their city limits, and you probably have a good point. However, it is not their fault that their fanbase is wide spread. Under the rules, they are a small market. Tiny even. The stadium holds almost a 6th of the city’s population.

St. Louis is a solid top end mid level franchise driven by a large historic regional following thanks to KMOX as well as more recent cross country merchandise sales. Sure, they aren’t the Yankees or the slightly lesser Red Sox, Cubs or Dodgers….but the identity of the Cards as a poor mans team…like an Oakland is absurd

I think the Giants have history on their side in the bay area, as well as a more recent influx of revenue due to the stadium. If Oakland could either build or move to San Jose…that’d definitely put them in a more favorable position.

But in both cases, do the teams have mid-market revenue because of where they are located or because of actions or inactions of management in the past? The number of tv’s in Chicago is the same for both the Cubs and the White Sox. If the White Sox have significantly less revenue than the Cubs, I am thinking that it’s either because the market is not big enough for two teams (which is a different issue than large market vs small market) or the White Sox have not take actions necessary to maximize their revenue (in which case they are still not a small market team, but an inefficiently or less efficiently operated team.) Are there other possible reasons? Same thing for the A’s–why don’t they have the same revenue as the Giants? (and if it’s because Oakland itself is a dump, MLB can do its part to fix that by supporting the A’s proposed move.) The Cardinals have been operated very efficiently, maximizing their potential revenue. Are the extra draft picks supposed to be allotted based on market size or operating inefficiency?

Certainly, with the White Sox and Cubs gambles were taken that paid off for the Cubs…before WGN the teams were much closer together. I believe there were many seasons in the 70s the Sox drew better. It’s a mix of both. But without the Sox building a downtown facing mini Comiskey it’ll be tough… and I also think the Cubs are one of the default national teams for many casual fans

St. Louis is a solid franchise….no doubt…it hasn’t always been that way…but the organization now has been able to tap into the regions historical roots. St. Louis has a wide multi generational fan base into Iowa, Illinois, and wrapped around to Arkansas and Oklahoma… even KS

I have read that the split between Cubs/White Sox is closer to 50/50 within the city, but outside of the south suburbs like Orland Park..maybe out to Joliet….the Cubs just trounce the Sox. I suppose we could go into sociological reasoning.. etc
.

I’ve got zero problem with it. They are really one of the ten smallest markets in baseball. Just because they have put together an A+ organization does not mean they should not be in the competitive balance lottery. It’s amazing how they draw actually. Yeah, their history helps but they put real good teams on the field to get the fan support they do.

They base the market size on the actual size of the metro area that the team plays in. What allows the Cardinals to punch bigger than their size is that they are a team with regional and even national appeal. They shouldn’t be penalized for being a 132-year-old organization with one of the best non-Yankee records of success in baseball history.

Even then, it’s not like they can carry the payroll of the Yankees or Dodgers, or even teams like Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and Texas. They just do a good job with the resources available to them.

Met fans are being penalized because Wilpon and Selig are friends. Cards let Pujols walk and bring in Beltran while Mets let go of Reyes and bring in nothing. I don’t see how the Cards are being penalized when they have as many states as the Red Sox do rooting for a team. Cards new stadium was privately funded and not public one so money is not a problem with them. They could spend more but why do so when you get results. Cards offered Pujols 220 million dollars. You think a small market team could do that?

What do the Cardinals have to do with any of this? The Mets play in the biggest market in the country. The Mets’ problem is that they have an ownership group that bankrolled their team with stolen money from a crook, and then had to pay the piper when the crook got caught. Selig should have made them sell the team when they couldn’t fund it commensurate with the market they play in anymore. He did it to Frank McCourt, and he should have had the guts to do the same to Wilpon. At least McCourt was only stealing from his own team, not paying the team’s expenses with money stolen from charities.

The stadium was actually publicly funded. There was a tax involved and a lot of discussions that took place. The DeWitt family contributed some to the stadium and also the majority of the funding for the ballpark village.

That’s probably a bit aggressive, even with two big-name starting pitching additions. We got a 151 OPS+ out of Anthony Rizzo and a 121 OPS+ out of Chris Coghlan (his career high is 122 in his RoY season) just to finish with 73 wins. Everything would have to break our way to be serious contenders in 2015.

That said, I’ll be disappointed if the Cubs can’t finish .500 next year.

Would’ve given the Cardinals more offense that they actually needed. That trade made their IF offense weaker, which contributed to them struggling all season offensively. And they also added Mark Ellis to their IF for almost the same price with no value in return. Not to mention adding Lackey, Masterson, Pierzinski, and Choate. Considering the outcome, in a full season of those 4 plus Ellis, it would’ve cost them over $40 million dollars in dead weight salary. Fortunately for them, they got 5+ WAR from Peralta at another $15 million. That trade was a bad move on the part of the Cardinals.

You really evaluate things in weird ways. The Freese trade wasn’t as terrible for the Angels as it looked at first. But the Cardinals got what they wanted out of it. You’re stuck on this “the Cardinals needed more offense”. A run saved is as good as a run scored. And the Cardinals have one of the best defenses in baseball, helped by that trade.

They would’ve gotten more overall value from their IF had they not traded Freese and kept Carpenter at 2B instead of going with Wong. Definitely would’ve had more offense, which is what they needed. I think that was one of the points where we saw a team relying a little too much on young prospects. They shed Freese’s salary, yet they added the salaries of Lackey, Masterson, Pierzynski, Ellis, and Choate, and got very little value (if any) from them. The Cardinals struggled until late in the season, and I think keeping Freese as well as Salas would’ve served them better so they would not have had to go on a late season run. They could’ve easily been stuck and not made then playoffs at all. The Angels won that trade.

Don’t forget that Freese was also very bad or injured during the first half before both he and Wong turned it on in the second half. I then think the little extra value Freese would’ve provided over Wong on offense in the second half was mitigated at the very least by the much better defense provided at both 2B and 3B. Bourjos was a disappointment, but he still provided value as an elite defender and baserunner, which with combined with Grichuk’s emergence in September approximately makes up for not having Salas this year. It’s way too early to call any winners or losers with that trade.

By the way, l admit Ellis and Masterson were complete busts, but the Lackey trade has worked out pretty well (with him still under contract for the league minimum next year), Choate (who was signed before the 2013 season, not this past offseason) is still a pretty good LOOGY, and Pierzynski was a necessary and cheap signing who has performed about as well as they could reasonably expect..

I’d rather have Wong and Carpenter manning the infield positions than Carpenter and Freese going forward. Freeze was expendable and Bourjos and especially Grichuk were consolation prizes. Wong had his growing pains but he is going to be good. Saying the Angels won that trade is ridiculous at this point. We will no better in a year or two but my eyes tell me the Cardinals made the right decision for the Cardinals.

Last night the Cardinals hit 4 HR’s to win a game in the series for the NL pennant.

All 4 of those players were youngsters drafted by the Cardinals and developed in their farm system. And the Cardinals have not drafted high in who knows how long.

Large market, medium market or small market – teams that are contenders for long periods of time do it by getting young, cheap players out of their farm system. The Cardinals have been among the best, if not the best, since Branch Rickey came up with the farm system around 1915.

Just looking at the overall success of prospects, I’d say there’s at least a 75% chance that Taveras doesn’t become what was projected. In that case I’d say he should be traded for even just an attractive offer and not even overwhelming. His trade value is already down from 3 mos. ago. A poor spring training and then they’re in hunker-down mode hoping he turns it around in AAA or eventually traded straight up for equally disappointing change of scenery prospect. (insert ‘Trout only had 120 at-bats and didn’t look good either’ comments)

Actually, I’d say Taveras’s trade value has gone up compared to three months ago. He’s now mostly adjusted to and proven he can hit Major League pitching compared to when his only Major League experience was absolutely awful in a week-long cup of coffee back in June. People keep forgetting that he actually hit pretty decently once he finally received semi-regular playing time, and even his overall numbers are a lot better than Wong’s at this time last year.

Ugh, stop praising the Pujols decision. The Cardinals have had HUGE fortune in the that their homegrown talent has developed well and avoided serious injury at a higher rate than most systems. Almost ALL of the contributors in on their roster were part of the STL farm system BEFORE the Cardinals decided not to re-sign him.

Cardinal fans are quickly becoming insufferable as they have very little ability to recognize how large a role luck has in these large batch success amongst farm systems.

Thats historical revisionist history. The law of averages show that most teams revert to an average number of major leaguers developed from their farm. Its not uncommon that a team goes on a bender for a few years and produces great talent (see Tampa Bay, Oakland, Yankees in the early 2000s, Red Sox right now) that is out of trend both before and afterward.

So easy in hindsight. I think if the Angels were in the NL Central this whole time they’d be winning that division every year and doing it by winning 95+ or even over 100 games. Not how the Cardinals do it by barely even winning 9 or even less like they have. The Angels didn’t have to even win 90 this season, but they won 98 playing nearly half their games against the game’s toughest division. There is a lot of luck involved in the Cardinals success. It’s almost as if being in the NL Central makes them playoff contenders by default.

The number of teams in a division alone does not really determine the difficulty of winning a division. It’s the quality of the teams within that division. In that time period, the AL West has been a very tough division from 2002-2004 and from 2010-2014. 2005 through 2009 was a different story. Put the Cardinals in the AL West and I’m sure it would be much more difficult for them.

we use statistics in everything baseball and you want to ignore a very simple one? Quite simply from ’98 to ’13 it was easier for a team to win the AL west than it was to win the NL central. Sure we could continue to add context but at the beginning that’s were its at.

The benders are generally coming from extended periods of horrible losing (see Braves with Cox as GM, TBR, A’s, Yankees in early 90’s snagging Jeter, Giants grabbing Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey), following by playoff competitive period where they get back of first round draft picks which my draft study showed that the level of available good players falls to a quarter of that available in the top 5 picks overall. In other words, bad losing teams (picks 1-5) get picks 4 times as likely to be good as playoff competitive teams drafting 21-30.

Though there are always some luck involved (Pujols was total luck, HOF caliber player from that far back in the draft, that’s needle in the haystack lucky).

The Angels have as many 90 win seasons as the Cardinals have since they won the WS in 2002. The Angels have also won no less than 92 games in those 7 playoff seasons. The Cardinals have barely won 90 games in most of the 90 win seasons they’ve had in that span. And that’s in a weak division. They won the WS in 2006 with an 83-79 record, which brings up the argument about their playoff success being a fortunate result of coming out on top of the crap shoot that is the MLB Postseason. Put the Cardinals in the AL West and let’s see what happens. The point I’m trying to make here is that the Cardinals’ so-called high rate of success needs a closer look instead of just buying into the media narrative that they’re the model organization of MLB.

Quickly becoming insufferable? They’re the greatest baseball fans in the world….just ask them. Don’t get me wrong… they have some amazing fans… but some act like hipsters who jumped off the Red Sox train cause that got too popular.

How are they the greatest fans? Cause they show up to a the ballpark when their team is winning? Didn’t someone get shot at the last game? I mean, im not saying they’re bad fans, it’s just pretty unique that someone dubs themselves “the greatest” anything.

They wouldn’t be lousy. They had enough dead weight salary going to players like Pierzinski, Masterson, and Ellis that could easily go to Albert Pujols while filling those spots with cheaper options that probably would’ve given them just as much value. Their payroll was $141 million, which was almost the same as the Angels going into 2014, but then was about only $20 million less by season’s end.

My comment wasn’t really about the Cardinals, just to refute the notion that fans might be less than stellar for not paying high prices to watch any sub par team. Baseball is a market, and the customers certainly don’t owe the business their paid loyalty. In fact fans staying away might be the only voice that matters

First of all, the Cardinals’ payroll has never been anywhere near that number (only just above $111M Opening Day 2014).
Second, Pierzynski was a necessary signing on the cheap, and while Masterson and Ellis were both busts, we only paid 2 months of Masterson’s salary while Ellis’s contract wasn’t that bad at only about $5M for one year.

While this is somewhat true, the Cards don’t rely on just their talented youth. The Pujols money has been spread around to pay for veteran free agents like Beltran and Peralta as well as helped pay for the Molina and Wainwright long-term extensions. On top of that, we wouldn’t have Wacha or Piscotty without the compensation draft picks we received.

From the performance aspect, nothing “smart” about not paying Pujols $250M when his performance was steadily declining in the several years prior to free agency. The Cardinals didn’t need him as a gate draw. They do fine at the gate with or without him as an attraction. And when did it become a “mistake to fix a roster problem by trading off the Major League roster”? Players are traded all the time off the major league roster. Rarely will you find a roster problem fixed with a deal for a minor league player. Baseball history is replete with such trades making or breaking a club’s chances. If you’re a Cardinal fan, think Broglio for Brock (and snicker once again).

Yes but major league players are rarely traded off the 25 man of legitimate contending teams like the Cards when they dealt Kelly and Craig. It was a pretty bold move, although they didn’t really lose much with Craig.

I envy the Cardinals as a Pirates fan. They continually make smart decisions and draft very well. I hate the Cardinals(in a good way) but they do it right. I really hope Pittsburgh is able to follow their model and make good decisions and draft well too.

Yes you would. If the Cardinals could afford that much to sign him, they can afford the others you listed. Their payroll was $141 million! You need to take a closer look at their payroll page. There is actually enough dead weight in salary to replace with Albert Pujols’ salary. Start with Justin Masterson, AJ Pierzynski, Mark Ellis. And almost all of their roster made less than $10 million a piece in 2014. When digging into the claim that not signing Albert Pujols was such a wise decision, one will find that it doesn’t really make any difference. They still made moves to add that salary in spots where they could’ve gotten much cheaper options from other places. When you have the chance to sign Albert Pujols, you take it. No questions asked. Too easy to second guess in hindsight.

hingsight is great with masterson, wiggington and others too. at 24 million a year there would have to be sacrifices. Cardinals are a small market team and cant spend 200 million like teams in ny or la. If they would of signed him they would have to take away 24 million so guys like i listed would not have been signed/resigned. AP last 3 years in st.louis his stats had gone down in each year so it was a smart decision.

I just listed the some of those sacrifices that would probably have never been signed or acquired had they re-signed Pujols. And with Pujols on the roster, the Cardinals likely would have filled those other spots with cheaper options that would’ve probably given just as much value if not more than Pierzinski and Masterson. The Cardinals got no value from Lackey, Masterson, Pierzinski, Choate, or Ellis, which in a full season of all those players combined would cost them over $40 million dollars.

Pierzynski filled in for an injured Yadi and did a decent job and only costed the cardinals mlb minimum. Choate has been up and down but as a lefty specialist has been fine. Lackey is pitching next year on a 500k contract which is huge value right there. Ellis was hurt most of the the year so theres 5 million. Masterson was a bad trade but only cost the cardinals 4 million. So theres 9 million no where near 40 million. Your statement is flawed.

I know what you’re meaning when you say small market, but your terminology is wrong….unless you consider any non NY, LA, or CHI to be small market. The Cardinals are a top tier mid market. One of the few with s global merchandise presense. They are s solid organization.. but they aren’t Tampa or Oakland or even KC. They’re even over Houston and the White Sox

Only so many people can fit inside a stadium….market size also needs to include the national and international business of a team. St. Louis is a great baseball town..but their market… even local… stretches beyond the metro. I grew up in south central Kansas and if you threw a rock you’d hit a cards fan. They split Illinois with the Cubs, and cram Wrigley Field

Yes, but it still doesn’t make sense when their actual revenue is much higher. Who cares what the actual market size is when the team still manages to draw 3M+ a year and usually finishes with at least a winning record? I’m a Cards fan, and while I won’t look gift draft picks in the mouth, even I don’t think we deserve extra picks.

The Cardinals have better revenue because they have a long history of success and market themselves well. I’m not a Cardinals fan, but I don’t think they should be punished for doing well. They’re a small market and deserve the same benefits as any other small market franchise.

They made the best offer they felt they could make and which made sense for the team. Pujols had a choice–take less money and be a Cardinal for life, which has its benefits; or chase the top dollar. He took the money, and the Cardinals did what good organizations do–they re-purposed the money they weren’t paying Pujols to strengthen the team in other areas.

Of course they repurposed the money. That isn’t a mark of a good organization, it is the mark of any organization. You try to do what you can. This still doesn’t make the move one that the Cardinals CHOSE.